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Student Film: Revisiting the Cuban Revolution

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As part of her Global Honors capstone project, UW Tacoma student Kylene Yumul, produced this video on Cuba. (Kylene graduated with honors in June 2009.) Here's what she had to say about the video:

I like the idea of video; I think moving images communicate a message that mere words cannot. Hence, when it came to creating a project about the mysterious contradiction that is Cuba, film was a natural choice.

Two years ago, as I prepared myself to examine this largely misunderstood island and determine why its undeniably beguiling brand of socialism has mystified the world for nearly half a century, I was convinced that the Cuban Revolution would survive the 21st century more successfully than any other political revolution that had ever been. Fifty years after its triumph and at the mercy of a global economic recession, I am apt to conclude that there might be fatal flaws to the Cuban system after all — and yet, there are truths about Cuba that would never have been realized without its socialist revolution.

The truth about Cuba was this: the measure of a nation’s success only goes as high as how confident citizens are that their neighbors on the next city block will let them use their electric cooking range when the power goes out at one block but not the other. Life offers no simplistic answers, in Cuba or elsewhere. Cubans taught me to slow down in this profoundly troubled, pressured world; because if you stop rushing and listen long enough, you might just hear the music — thank your lucky stars that you are exactly where you are meant to be at this moment enjoying the melody that is your life — and dance to it.